The Muckrakerhttp://muckraker.me
Mon, 25 Aug 2014 23:00:06 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.3Postscript: The seizure of the Boston College tapeshttp://muckraker.me/2014/08/25/postscript-months-after-the-seizure-of-the-boston-college-tapes-the-consequences-are-felt-by-victims-and-journalists-alike/
http://muckraker.me/2014/08/25/postscript-months-after-the-seizure-of-the-boston-college-tapes-the-consequences-are-felt-by-victims-and-journalists-alike/#commentsMon, 25 Aug 2014 20:34:18 +0000http://muckraker.me/?p=2947If journalists and the victims they cover – who often regard us as hungry parasites – have anything in common, it’s that the truth is denied to them both. There are gaps in Northern Ireland’s historical narrative from 1969-98 (and beyond) but those who could erase them are too afraid to talk. The legacy of the seizure of the Boston College tapes is a generation afraid to recall what really happened.

In seizing the Boston College tapes, the PSNI were supposedly “helping” victims, aiding in the truth recovery process. In hindsight, as I was to realise in the months that followed, it destroyed any truth recovery process that could have happened by removing the tapes from the public eye. Without the “sunlight of transparency”, any subsequent judicial proceedings in the Adams/McConville case would be suspect and dodged by rumours of Adams calling in favours from on high. Even if he was found innocent – and genuinely was – it would not seem like justice when justice was literally not *seen* to be done. There would be two trials – one in an actual courtroom, one in the court of public opinion – and Adams would have walked free from one while being hung in the other.

Like the disappearance of Jean McConville, the seizure of the tapes was a hiding of the evidence, away from a public jury that would have judged those alleged to have ordered her execution. When the media furore died down and journalists stopped asking about Adams innocence or guilt, her voice was silenced once again.

*****************************

On an intellectual level, I knew the end of the project – with the PSNI seeking to seize the remainder of the tapes – was a disaster. Sources – police, Republican, Loyalist – were suddenly reluctant to talk about anything before 1998. After two conversations, they’d shut down. Fear of the HET was already making it difficult to get them on or off the record; the reaction to Boston multiplied it.

It wasn’t until the initial hysteria died down that it hit me. I was sitting in a coffee shop in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter with a friend. We’ll call her Roisin.

Roisin worked with victims; it was her full-time job. In Northern Ireland, victims services is an industry in itself yet it’s falling apart. All around her, she said, were cuts: funding being slashed, colleagues being let go.

It was disappointing news: I’d just had an idea. I’d gotten to know a lot of families through my own work, people who are desperate for answers. Would it be possible to get funding to hire a bunch of researchers to work with them and help find those answers? In theory, this is the HET’s job but I’d yet to meet a victim who was satisfied with their work.

Roisin shook her head. “The problem is the funding comes from the same people who don’t want the truth to get out. They will want to control what you find.”

**********************************

“Is there any information anywhere? Has it been covered up and why?”

On the afternoon of 19th August 2014, Ann Travers sent out that tweet.

Since the murder of her sister Mary on 8th April 1984, her family have relentlessly asked for answers. The daughter of Belfast judge Tom Travers, she was attacked – alongside her father and mother – on the way home from Sunday mass. Tom was seriously wounded in the attack.

What makes the case so strange is the claim from a former Special Branch officer who handled IRA agent Joe Fenton. He claimed Fenton had offered access to the flat the killers left from but was rebuffed by a higher-up in the RUC. Many have taken this to mean that at least one of the shooters was an informant who was – and is – being protected.

It’s long been thought that one of the shooters was Joe Haughey, widely believed to be an RUC Special Branch agent at the time of the murder. Haughey was arrested and tried after Tom Travers identified him as his attacker but was found not guilty.

Yet mystery still surrounds the second shooter – Mary’s killer.

In the 30 years since the murder, says Ann, a name has never once been suggested to her as to who it might be. It disturbs her.

“Why does no one have a clue who this person was – there hasn’t even been speculation? I don’t understand it. Numerous stories have been written about who my father’s shooter was but not once has someone come to me with the name of the man who shot Mary.”

Why does she need answers? Because, as she told one Twitter follower: “I need to know if I’m standing beside them in the supermarket. What if my daughters or sons dated their children? All possible.”

*****************************************

She’s right. The nature of Northern Irish society – small, incestuous, cosy – means that the man or woman who killed your loved one could be your next door neighbour. They could be a friend, an acquaintance, the man you make small talk with in the corner shop every morning when you pick up your paper. This is especially true in rural communities where, throughout the Troubles, Protestant and Catholics continued to mingle and live beside one another.

Despite the millions poured into the HET, families are increasingly having to investigate their loved ones deaths for themselves before finding answers. Despite a HET investigation, the circumstances surrounding the McGurk’s Bar Massacre – involving a cover-up by the British government – would never have been known were it not for the research of Ciaran MacAirt, the grandson of one of the victims. He published his findings in a book last year.

MacAirt’s work was incredible and marked him as one of the best young investigative journalists this country has seen in recent years. Using publicly available records from the National Archives and the FOI Act, he was able to prove – beyond all reasonable doubt – that a cover-up had taken place. Yet it raised an uncomfortable question – why were victims having to do this work themselves? How could the HET – with a team and the resources of the PSNI behind it – not uncover the answers that a man working out of his home office had?

Last year, the PSNI told me that – out of the 1,850 cases the HET had worked on so far – just three had led to charges, with two leading to convictions.

As I wrote at the time:

“To summarise: 0.5% of the HET’s work to date has resulted in action being taken. If we include convictions alone, that number drops to 0.1%.”

Perhaps the number has increased since then. I doubt it. Of all the families I’ve spoken to or come across during the course of my research for the Bradford book, I’ve yet to meet one who was satisfied with the HET or how they handled things. With over 3,000 cases to clear, it seems to be – as one victim put it – a “box-ticking exercise”: make sure the cops 30 years ago filed the right paperwork and there’s definitely no avenues for re-investigation.

Of course, former cops and ex-prisoners who’ve had their collars felt by the HET would disagree with this sentiment. Still, disturbing stories keep popping up. Recently, I learned – from a very reliable source – of an ex-cop who tried to blow the whistle on a cover-up involving a murder. The HET subsequently raided his house, removed the incriminating files backing up his story and – years later – have yet to return them.

In the case of the Travers family, Fenton’s handler was arrested by the Police Ombudsman after speaking out. When I tried to make contact with him through a third party, I was told he doesn’t speak to journalists out of fear that he will be arrested again.

]]>http://muckraker.me/2014/08/25/postscript-months-after-the-seizure-of-the-boston-college-tapes-the-consequences-are-felt-by-victims-and-journalists-alike/feed/0Letter to my 14 year old selfhttp://muckraker.me/2014/08/10/letter-to-my-14-year-old-self/
http://muckraker.me/2014/08/10/letter-to-my-14-year-old-self/#commentsSun, 10 Aug 2014 16:12:28 +0000http://muckraker.me/?p=2938Yesterday, I tweeted a response to the hateful homophobic comments made by a Northern Irish pastor, James McConnell. Mr McConnell said: “Two lesbians living together are not a family. They are sexual perverts playing let’s pretend.”

I said: “People like Pastor McConnell made 14 year old me feel like I was better off dead, rather than deal with the shame of being gay.”

I rarely use this blog for anything other than professional work/journalism-related matters but a number of people asked me to write a blog post summarising what I said. Someone remarked that maybe some 14 year old would read it and take hope. So I decided to write a letter to my 14 year old self, 10 years later, as a 24 year old looking back.

Kid,

It’s going to be okay.

I know you’re not feeling that way right now. You’re sitting in school. The other kids are making fun of you. You told the wrong person you had a crush and soon, they all knew your secret. It’s horrible. They make your life hell. They laugh at you, whisper about you and call you names. It’s not nice. And you can’t ask an adult for help because if you did that, you’d have to tell them the truth and you can’t do that. They can’t ever know your secret.

Life is so hard right now. Every day, you wake up wondering who else will find out your secret and hate you.

It won’t always be like this. It’s going to get better.

In a year’s time, you’re going to join a scheme that trains people your age to be journalists. I know the careers teacher suggested that as an option and you said no, because it sounded boring and all you wanted to do was write, but go with it. For the first time in your life, you will feel like you’re good at something useful. You’ll have found your calling. You’ll meet amazing people. And when the bad times come again – FYI, your first girlfriend is not “the one” and you will screw up that History exam – it will be journalism that helps you soldier on.

In two years time, you will leave school and go to a local technical college. Don’t worry – you’re going to make friends. These will be your first real friends in semi-adulthood, the people who will answer your calls at 4 O’Clock in the morning. In the years to come, you’ll only keep in touch with Gavyn and Jonny but you’ll remember the others fondly. When you’re 17, you’ll tell them your secret and they won’t mind. It will take courage but you will do it. Gavyn will become Christian and you will fear that he will hate you but one afternoon, you’ll receive a text message saying: “This changes nothing. You’ll always be my friend.” Accept him for what he is as he has accepted you.

You’ll go to university, like you always planned to, but you’ll drop out because it reminds you of school where people were cold and you had few friends. The campus is just too big and scary. But this experience will be the making of you. You’ll be making your way in the world for the first time. Through this, you will meet the people who become your best friends. They’ll help you replace all the bad memories with good ones. For the first time in your life, you will like yourself.

Three months before your 21st birthday, you will tell Mum the secret. You will be sobbing and shaking and she will be frightened because she doesn’t know what’s wrong. Christmas will be just a couple of weeks away. You have to tell her because you’ve met someone you like and you can’t live with the guilt anymore. You can’t get the words out so she says it: “Are you gay?” And you will say, “Yes Mummy, I’m so sorry.” And instead of getting mad, she will reply “Thank God you’re not pregnant”. You will crawl into her lap, sobbing, as she holds you and tells you that you are her little girl and how could you ever think that anything would make her love you any less? You will feel like a prisoner who has been given their freedom. You will remember all the times you pleaded with God to help you because you were so afraid and you will feel so foolish because you had nothing to worry about.

You will tell your siblings. No one will mind. Mary will hug you in the food court in Castlecourt as you eat KFC together and tell you she’s so proud of you. The others will joke about how they always knew. They will all say some variation of “I love you,” “I’m so proud of you”, “This doesn’t change a thing.”

You will feel so lucky. You watched James get thrown out of his house after coming out to his parents. You were in Michael’s house the night his Mum said she would “beat the gay out of him”. You will feel guilty for being the lucky one and getting it easy in the end, even though you went through hell to get there.

You will fall in love for the first time. You will have your heart broken for the first time and you will feel like you might die of the pain. You won’t. You will get over it.

Right now, you’re wondering if you’ll ever be “normal”. You are normal. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not going to hell. You did nothing to deserve their hate.

Life will not only get easier, it will get so much better. You will walk down the street without fear. Teenage boys you’ve never met will not throw things at you and shout names. Your friends will be the best anyone could ask for. You will be invited to parties. You will have a social life. You will be loved. People will use words like “awesome” and “cool” and “witty” to describe you and you’ll forget the times the other kids said you were “weird” and “odd” and a “lesbo”.

You will do “normal” things. You will spend time with your Mum. You will go to work and pay your bills. You will go to the cinema with your best friend every week because that’s your ritual – dinner then an action movie where things explode. You will fall in love again. You will smile every day, knowing that someone loves you as much as you love them.

Keep hanging on, kid. It’s worth it. I love you.

]]>http://muckraker.me/2014/08/10/letter-to-my-14-year-old-self/feed/0Journalism, like music, is now a project economyhttp://muckraker.me/2014/06/16/journalism-like-music-is-now-a-project-economy/
http://muckraker.me/2014/06/16/journalism-like-music-is-now-a-project-economy/#commentsMon, 16 Jun 2014 12:40:12 +0000http://muckraker.me/?p=2918I saw some sad news today on Mediagazer: Byliner, the longform publisher co-founded by John Tayman, might be folding.

For those not familiar with it, Byliner is a publisher of bite-sized fiction and non-fiction. When I met Tayman in San Francisco a couple of years ago, he talked about realising there was a sweet spot in between a magazine article and a book – a story that was neither too short nor too long. We’ve come to know these stories as ‘longform’. Generally 3,000-30,000 words in length, they even have their own site and Twitter hashtag.
The company wanted to be like Netflix, charging a monthly “all you can eat” type subscription.

Since the industry’s implosion post-2005, many of us have spent hours wondering what the next business model is. Whole conferences have been dedicated to answering that question: how will journalism make money in the Internet age?

For enterprise/investigative/longform journalism, the answers are already here – but they’re not what we want them to be.

A comforting idea but not a great idea

Byliner’s key proposition was that it could be the Netflix or Spotify of longform. Yet words do not have the star/pulling power of film. The attraction to that particular revenue model wasn’t that it could work but what it represented: a monthly pay check. In an industry beset by economic stability, the thought that readers would want to contribute a monthly sum is nice. It symbolises stability.

Therein lies the problem. The search for business models has not been dictated by what the market wants but a yearning for the old days, when you did your job and collected your salary at the end of every month.

It doesn’t work like that anymore. Across the creative industries – film, journalism, music – practitioners are living from project to project.
I call this the Project Economy. You make as much money as your latest project does. When the project ends, you move on to the next one and hope people find it interesting and will pay you to do it.

Example: my latest investigative project, The Last Story of Robert Bradford. Using Beacon Reader, I raised nearly $6,000 through a crowdfunding campaign – nearly $1500 of which is recurring in monthly subscriptions. After Beacon takes its 30% cut (which it shares around writers whose stories have done particularly well, a monthly bonus) and the exchange rate, it works out at about £330 a month. Not to be sniffed at.

However, I’m aware that I’ll probably have, at most, a year’s mileage out of the project. Then there’ll – most likely – be a year where I make no income from it whilst writing the final edition, finish up research and shop for a publisher. To prepare for that eventuality – should it come to pass – I’m squirrelling away as much money as I can from freelance assignments.

This is the reality of living in the Project Economy. As a filmmaker friend remarked, when times are good, they’re really good – but money management is key to survival. A % of every commission needs to be saved to see you through the times when no money is coming in.
There is no stability in this industry anymore. Being a journalist is now like being an actor: unless you have a huge hit, you’re going to struggle.

The search for business models needs to reflect this. “The good old days” aren’t coming back. It’s a different world. And it’s scary. Staying focused enough to follow your heart instead of the pay check is tough. But there has to be a way.

]]>http://muckraker.me/2014/06/16/journalism-like-music-is-now-a-project-economy/feed/0In defence of Anthony McIntyrehttp://muckraker.me/2014/05/12/in-defence-of-anthony-mcintyre/
http://muckraker.me/2014/05/12/in-defence-of-anthony-mcintyre/#commentsMon, 12 May 2014 01:37:11 +0000http://muckraker.me/?p=2895In the wake of Gerry Adams arrest, a lot has been written over the past couple of weeks about the Boston College tapes.

Throughout the furore, one person has been consistently demonised, other than Jean McConville herself: Anthony McIntyre. Anthony was the researcher who interviewed Republican ex-prisoners for the Boston project. He’s been denounced, in various graffiti around Belfast and by Sinn Fein themselves, as a “tout” and an “informer”, a disgruntled ex-Provo motivated by his hatred of the Peace Process and the feeling that Gerry “sold him out”.

As a journalist, I have to be impartial – making judgements based on the evidence I see before me. But all journalists have biases – some just choose to hide them instead of putting them aside (I think that’s wrong but I’ll save that for another post). Growing up, Anthony McIntyre is not someone I ever imagined I’d be defending. As I’ve noted before, I’m the second generation product of a mixed marriage. My Granddad was an Army man, a Scottish Protestant who married a Derry Catholic. I grew up in a Republican area where I took a lot of flak for that. One half of my family line were considered ‘legitimate targets’. And consequently, growing up, I hated the IRA. I hated everyone who sympathised with them and I hated everyone who served for them. I hated them because I thought they hated me, because when I played with their children in the street, they told me all British soldiers should be shot and I felt ashamed of who I was and where I’d come from. Like a lot of people in this country, I had my own emotional baggage to deal with, most of it misconceptions and stereotypes. The hatred wasn’t limited to Republicans – I had plenty in reserve for those on the Loyalist side too.

In hindsight, I realise I was a bigot. I didn’t hate anyone of the same religion but I looked down on people who “had a past”. I thought myself above all ex-prisoners, whether they be Republican or Loyalist. These were evil people who did evil things and I would never do such evil things because I was a good person and above all that.

Then I met Anthony.

If you’d have told 15 year old me that, less than 10 years from now, I’d be friends with an ex-Provo, I’d have thought you were crazy.

What’s been characterised as his “anti-peace process” agenda is his fury that – as he put it to me last week – “Not one fucking life was worth it.”

Anthony challenged every stereotype that bigoted 15 year old me had of ex-prisoners. Through months of conversations that began with me ringing to ask a question for a story, I came to see that he wasn’t a monster. While I will never agree with the decision to take a human life, it became clear that he – and many others, whether they’d been in the UVF or the INLA – had not been motivated by a desire to inflict suffering. Many had been frightened, naive teenagers. ‘Signing up’, for them, seemed like the only way to protect their community. And once in the organisation, there was no way out. In one story I heard about an induction for UVF recruits, a 15 year old boy was told: “The only way out of this organisation is in a coffin.”

The pain and suffering these recruits caused can never be excused or minimised. And many, unfortunately, were just plain evil. But through getting to know Anthony – and other ex-prisoners – through my job, I started to believe that just as many had been misguided, used by older men who should have known better.

I’ve said all this before. But it seems important now, more than ever, to say it again. Anthony has been savaged in the press and on social media over the last two weeks. Very few have come out to defend him. He’s been denounced by people who have never met him.

Of course, above everything and everyone else, the one person we must remember in all this is Jean McConville – and her family. They didn’t deserve any of this and neither did she.

So here’s my two cents, for what it’s worth: the Anthony I know is a good person. He’s decent and honourable and sweet. What’s been characterised as his “anti-peace process” agenda is his fury that – as he put it to me last week – “Not one fucking life was worth it.” Every day, like most ex-prisoners, he has to live with what he’s done. He carries both his own sins and the sins of his comrades. Sometimes, publicly, he says he has no regrets – but in private moments, I see him torn by anguish. I see it in the eyes of many ex-combatants. Now that we have peace – even an uneasy one – the body count weighs more heavily on their minds as they wonder if war was really necessary.

The Boston tapes case has brought financial ruin to Anthony and his wife, Carrie. They owe 15,000 in legal fees, having spent years trying to prevent the tapes from falling into the hands of the PSNI. It wasn’t about denying victims justice but ensuring that, one day, the truth would come out. There is so much we still don’t know about The Troubles. Through the Boston tapes, we had a chance at seeing history through the eyes of those who participated in it. That opportunity is gone – and will probably never return.

Of course, above everything and everyone else, the one person we must remember in all this is Jean McConville – and her family. They didn’t deserve any of this and neither did she. Part of me feels guilty for typing this post, knowing that so much attention has been focused on Adams and his detention instead of their suffering.

But Gerry Adams has an entire party machinery and God knows who else to protect him from his critics and “the dark side” of policing. Anthony McIntyre does not. He’s an easy target. His enemies know this. As his friend, I feel obliged to speak up.

Today, I was walking down the Lagan towpath - a path that stretches along miles and miles of canal and river from Belfast to Lisburn - with my friend Barton. I was venting about the story. Every now and then, I run into a brick wall. I need a document, a phone call, anything to come unstuck. Usually, within a week, I do, but the frustration until then is unbearable.

Barton didn’t have any solutions but he listened and he understood. And by the time we were returning down the path after breakfast at a little cafe beside the river, I knew what I needed to do next. I was ready to make another round of phone calls.

Three years ago, there was no one to have these conversations with. When the frustration rose, I buried it, maybe having a little cry when I was alone.

This new crop of young reporters are expanding beyond the territory carved by the early bloggers by breaking stories and producing original reporting. Gradually, they’re starting to lead the mainstream press pack on certain stories. For example, Vixens recently broke a story that a Belfast City Council property had been used for an IRA remembrance event. It was picked up by the local mainstream press.

Many of these journalists have sprung up outside of newspapers out of sheer frustration. There are few jobs going – so they decided to create their own.

For me, the decision to go independent happened in 2009. A large local newspaper spiked three of my stories because they clashed with advertising interests. In two of those stories, the advertiser in questions was the Department of Health. With more than 1/4 of the population employed by the public sector here, local government is a big client. When the same paper – and others – turned down another huge story concerning the Department and serious corruption, I lost faith. It crushed my idealism. I didn’t want to be in that situation ever again. By going it alone, I felt I could report on my own terms, knowing I wouldn’t be forced to abandon a story because government department x spends a certain amount with the ad department. (In terms of local papers, there are – of course – some noble exceptions who would never allow advertising to get in the way of a great story – I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush).

So I think the current raft of new players will strengthen the local media ecosystem. We can afford to be rebellious. For example, I once rung the PSNI press office to ask them to clarify something. The lady on the other end of the phone told me they only gave quotes to publications ‘they liked’. She was brazenly admitting that they played the access game – if you were nice to them, they’d give you a quote. If not, screw you. If I was in a newspaper with a deadline to meet, I’d probably be lured into playing that game. Since I have time to deploy other means of getting the story, I can throw the ball back at them.

Indeed, I think the next generation of investigative journalists will be reporters who were originally online ‘upstarts’. Check out this investigation into peace funding by Off The Record, for example.

Having said that, there are growing pains. The biggest problem is the lack of mentors. These reporters aren’t walking into established newsrooms – they’re launching their own – so who do they turn to when they need advice?

I don’t have the answer to that – but there are conversations going on behind the scenes. Slowly, a rebel alliance is forming, with the independents coming together to form a larger whole.

I witnessed the meltdown and collapse of the ‘traditional’ route into the business. I thought I’d never be able to do what I love. Yet from where I’m standing right now, the future of journalism has never looked brighter.

While I’ve been working on the book for nearly 2 years, my journey in reporting started long before that. I wrote my first story in 2005. 9 years later, 4 days shy of my 24th birthday, I finally have my first steady reporting gig.

So, from the bottom of my heart – thank you to everyone who backed me or helped in some other way. You aren’t just helping me finish this story – you’ve made a dream come true. Journalism is a tough industry to be in right now and if it wasn’t for you wonderful people, I wouldn’t have the resources to keep chasing this story.

Some of you have been asking me what happens next:

• The campaign officially ends at 2:00am GMT on Monday 31st March. On Wednesday April 9th, you’ll receive the first chapter of the book (which I’m currently rewriting in a nervous state of caffeine-induced excitement)

• All backers and friends will be invited to a celebratory party. The details are being arranged but it’s most likely going to happen in late April/May. There will be free food and drink (it’s the least I can do)

• I’m already planning trips to see sources and hunt documents in the National Archives. I will, of course, keep you updated via Beacon

As always, if you have any questions – ping me (lyra at muckraker dot me). Otherwise, I’ll see you over on the Beacon forums (details on this coming soon).

I love you all. Night.

P.S The reason I’m only writing this post now is because I was in London yesterday and didn’t actually get to bed the night before because of my early flight.

By backing the campaign, readers get access to the book as it’s being written, with a short chapter published each month. Instead of saving the story until the very end when the book is ready for publication, I’m giving them a chance to come with me on the journey as I knock doors and try to find answers. They will be with me as the story unravels.

This approach evolved out of the early days of The Muckraker when I would blog about the leads I was chasing and how a story was developing. This is the first time (as far as I’m aware) it’s been done with a longer work of non-fiction (though I stand to be corrected).

By doing this, I’m trying to answer the question: How do we fund long-term investigative journalism? Who will write the cheque that covers a reporter to go off and chase a story for months or years on end?

This is a two year project. I want it to work because I desperately want to finish this story – and funding would make that much easier – but I also want it to work because of what that could mean for investigative journalism. Other reporters would be able to copy the model, hopefully with equal success.

With this in mind, we’ve added a new reward just for future of news (FON) thinkers and journalism nerds. If you want access to warts and all updates on how the project is faring journalistically – in terms of sustainability, the challenges, pitfalls, etc – then pledge just $20 a month. I’ll be sharing everything, including metrics (no matter how bad they make me look). It will be a direct insight into how the project is doing and whether it could be a viable model for investigative journalism in the digital age. You’ll also have access to me via Beacon’s Q&A forums so you’ll be able to ask me questions directly about the project and how it’s going.

Have a question? Feel free to ping me an email: lyra at muckraker dot me.

]]>http://muckraker.me/2014/03/17/new-reward-option-just-for-journalism-wonks-get-exclusive-updates-on-how-the-overall-project-is-doing-its-implications-for-news/feed/0One week down, two to go: Progress update on the crowdfunding campaignhttp://muckraker.me/2014/03/17/one-week-down-two-to-go-progress-update-on-the-crowdfunding-campaign/
http://muckraker.me/2014/03/17/one-week-down-two-to-go-progress-update-on-the-crowdfunding-campaign/#commentsMon, 17 Mar 2014 00:45:35 +0000http://muckraker.me/?p=2852Today marks 7 days since I launched the crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to continue my reporting/write my book on Reverend Robert Bradford, an Ulster Unionist MP murdered in November 1981.

It’s been an amazing week. According to the Beacon guys, the campaign has smashed their records – raising over $2,000 on its first day.

Since Monday, 81 backers have pledged $3,050. Many have opted for the $60 (one-off yearly subscription) reward which surprised me; I thought most would stick to the $5-$15 monthly rewards.

For nearly 2 and a half years, I’ve been blogging here. I’ve posted stories about corruption and incompetence in government and public bodies. When expenses have cropped up – travel, lunches with sources, equipment costs – I’ve covered them myself.

Today, I’m launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds so I can continue my reporting. Specifically, the money will help me finish my latest investigative project, a book about the last weeks of Robert Bradford, a Northern Irish politician murdered in November 1981.

The Story

On 14th November 1981, Robert J. Bradford was sitting behind his desk in Finaghy Community Centre. Every month, he would attend an “advice surgery”, a chance for local voters to meet him and air their problems. For seven years, he’d represented South Belfast as a Member of Parliament (MP) at Westminster. This was a routine part of the job.

It made him vulnerable. Northern Ireland’s civil war, The Troubles, had been raging for 12 years. Politicians – like soldiers, police officers and judges – were seen as part of the British ‘Establishment’. Consequently, the IRA viewed them as “legitimate” targets. Thanks to advice surgeries, they knew exactly where and when an MP would be on a certain day every month. Even with a police bodyguard, it was dangerous. Yet as Bradford’s wife told a local newspaper, 30 years later:

“Do you stop living your life? Do you allow them to stop you? When you are an MP you are there to serve the people. It defeats the purpose if you stop going out to see the people.”

It happened just after 11.30.

The local area was being painted. When the gunmen approached, carrying a plank of wood and dressed in boiler suits, Bradford’s bodyguard – chatting to the centre’s caretaker in the doorway – thought nothing of it until they produced their guns. They ordered him and the caretaker, Ken Campbell, to lie on the ground.

Moments later, six or seven shots rang out. Bradford was dead. Campbell was also killed. The bodyguard was left unharmed.

32 years later

As I say in the video for my crowdfunding campaign: “For years, there’s been a rumour.”

Before he died, Bradford was said to have been “asking questions” about something sensitive. A politician with a history of asking awkward questions, it wouldn’t have been unlike him. In 1976, he accused a Loyalist (Protestant) terrorist group of colluding with the IRA (more than a decade later, he was proven correct). He frequently used Parliament and the media to reveal his latest findings.

This story has appeared in local newspapers before but it’s always been attributed to anonymous sources – and, consequently, never taken seriously. For the last year and a half, I’ve been tracking down Bradford’s friends and colleagues. I’ve spent hundreds of hours interviewing them and trawling through government and library archives. Using (mostly) on the record sources and documents, I’m trying to piece together what happened in the last weeks of his life. Is there some truth to the rumour? If not, where did it come from? What was he doing before his murder?

The Funding Problem – and a crazy new idea

News outlets don’t fund investigative reporting anymore (very few do, anyways). The industry is in financial trouble. Editors can’t invest time in stories that take months or years to uncover.

I found this out a long time ago. It shattered my idealistic delusions about what it would be like to work in a newsroom. Ever since then, I’ve figured out other ways of funding and publishing my work – publishing on this blog, working with another news site and generally digging into my own pockets.

Now, however, I need your help.

To continue my reporting, I need to raise some funds. I’m working with Beacon Reader – a crowdfunding site for journalists – to make this happen

Here’s how it works: if you’ve enjoyed my hellraising over the last couple of years, you can back me for as little as $5 a month. In exchange, you’ll get access to the book as it’s being written. Each month, I’ll be publishing a short chapter, detailing my latest findings. The book itself won’t be published until 2016 so you will literally see the story as it unravels. We’ll be finding answers together.

To my knowledge, this is the first time this has been done – at least within investigative journalism. I’ve always blogged and tweeted about the stories I was working on (though I’ve been a little more closed with the Bradford story simply because I had no idea if I’d find anything).

Want to support my reporting and independent investigative journalism in general?

• Cover travel costs so I can visit sources and interviewees living outside Northern Ireland

• Allow me to cut down on freelance assignments and get on with reporting this story

The campaign will run for 21 days until 31st March which also happens to be my 24th birthday.

Here’s hoping there’ll be double cause for celebration.

]]>http://muckraker.me/2014/03/10/supporting-independent-investigative-journalism-fund-my-book-on-beacon-reader/feed/0Twitter, I need your help finding someone who worked at Westminster more than 30 years agohttp://muckraker.me/2014/01/29/twitter-i-need-your-help-finding-someone-who-worked-at-westminster-more-than-30-years-ago/
http://muckraker.me/2014/01/29/twitter-i-need-your-help-finding-someone-who-worked-at-westminster-more-than-30-years-ago/#commentsWed, 29 Jan 2014 16:52:34 +0000http://muckraker.me/?p=2821This is probably going to be the weirdest #journorequest ever but I’m a believer in the power of the web and social media. For the last 6 months, I’ve been trying to locate someone without any luck. I don’t even know what her name is. Yet if anyone can help me find her, it’s you, Twitter.

Basically, I’ve hit a brick wall in my reporting and I believe she may be able to help me – or at least point me in the right direction (click here for a brief explainer about my current project, a book about a murdered politician from Northern Ireland).

The lady I’m looking for worked in Westminster in the late 1970s. She was likely either a Parliamentary Assistant for the Ulster Unionist Party (a Northern Irish political party) or a researcher/secretary, used by all the elected politicians at Westminster (known as MPs in the UK). It seems she joined some time between 1977-79, possibly slightly later, and wasn’t there for very long. I found this out from a former UUP MP. He remembers her as a “young, dark-haired girl” and said he remembered the staff celebrating her 19th or 20th – possibly 21st – birthday. Her father, he thinks, had something to do with lighthouses, perhaps looking after them or managing them.

I’m not sure how accurate the above description is. I’m asking people to remember things from over 30 years ago. Memories are flawed (example: most remember the lady in question but have forgotten her name). In other words: don’t blame them for inaccurate information, blame me (since I’m the one asking them to travel back in time 30 years).

If you know who this is, please ask her to get in touch with me: lyra@muckraker.me. If you can help me find her, I will be forever in your debt, Internet.